


in this light, in the overdrawn perspective

by p1013



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Blood, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, POV Multiple, Scarification, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, implied PTSD, implied depression, this is not a happy story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-22
Updated: 2020-02-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:14:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22845418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/p1013/pseuds/p1013
Summary: These are not things he chose for himself, these scars and imperfections, these hollownesses and gaping, invisible wounds. But they have been given to him, and now, they are his. As indistinguishable from his body as his soul. They are bound up in what makes him him, and though he wishes he could erase them, they are indelible and integral, indivisible from the whole.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Comments: 32
Kudos: 55
Collections: HP Kinkfest 2020





	in this light, in the overdrawn perspective

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gracerene](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gracerene/gifts).



Draco's body is a pale, wide expanse of gentle hills and valleys covered by a thin dusting of hair like scattered grass. It rises and falls with his breaths. The in and out is steady, even. Like the earth moving, it shifts with the gentle rasp of bones and sinew, of muscles pulling against tendons, of the ground rocking beneath unsteady feet. The land of his body is eroded, cut through by time and anger and love. Thin, almost imperceptible valleys intersected by larger, deeper ones. His fingers trail over those ridges like a map.

He thinks he might find his way home if he follows them. 

The jagged line on his right arm feels like feathers and claws, like warm earth and stained cloth. The straight, clean slash across his chest and stomach is the sting of cold tile and the taste of salt. Green eyes, wide in shock and horror. Blood pooling around his body, bright red and glowing like flame. 

His left arm is a stained and ugly thing. The ragged, rough desolation of that narrow band of blackened flesh — a firebreak in the middle of a verdant plain, a cold barrier island standing against the raging sea — beckons and haunts him. He cuts the taint from his body like underbrush, fertilizes the ground with his blood and tears. But no matter how many times he clears it from the land, the corruption always remains, his hands perhaps too stained to ever remove it fully. 

That is the surface of him, though. It's marred and imperfect, but it disguises the rest. The interior is littered with hollows and caves and cracks, all put there by hands that leave no marks, by the shift and tectonic slide of fear. He's a honeycomb, a solid thing that is brittle and empty. There used to be substance there, once, but it's dried up, desiccated. Now, he only waits to be filled again or to fall. 

These are not things he chose for himself, these scars and imperfections, these hollownesses and gaping, invisible wounds. But they have been given to him, and now, they are his. As indistinguishable from his body as his soul. They are bound up in what makes him _him_ , and though he wishes he could erase them, they are indelible and integral, indivisible from the whole.

* * *

The house around him echoes with emptiness. The dingy walls drag down the hallways, cast in shadow by flickering gas lights that would rather be unlit. The carpet beneath his feet is worn thin from forgotten footsteps and the floor creaks as he walks. It sounds like voices, like people lost and never found again. He tries not to listen, but his heart hurts all the same as he moves through the empty shell of his home. He lives in a corpse, a rotting and bloated thing, still precious for what it once was. And though it brings him pain and leaves him battered, he stays. It's another wound on his heart, another ache that he can't help but want. If he's feeling something, even misery, it means he's alive, and isn't that enough? 

His life is defined by misery, by scars. A before and an after, all gathered around his marked and marred forehead. He sees it every day. It stares at him as much as his mother's eyes, bright and reflected in the mirror. He loves it, and he hates it. Loves it because it brought him friends and magic, brought him strength and purpose, brought him through death and back again. But he hates it more. Hates all the things that it took from him. His parents. His childhood. His privacy. If he could remove it, he would. But the removal would only leave behind another, different scar, and at least he knows the shape and feel of this one. 

But he didn't choose it, and if he could, he would give it back. 

* * *

They didn't choose each other, either, not really. If Harry had spent a few more minutes at Gringotts or lingered at a window of any of the shops along Diagon Alley. If Draco hadn't needed the hem of his robe adjusted just so, hadn't fretted over the quality of the material and that particular shade of black. If they had each made many other, miniscule, mindless, pointless decisions, maybe their first meeting would not have gone the way it did. A single, coincidental interaction where two boys, so alike and yet so dissimilar, met and immediately fell into rivalry. Maybe their first meeting would have been on the train, or in the Great Hall, or in one of the many classrooms or hallways they spent their broken childhoods roaming. Maybe they would have only known of each other, been faceless names whispered by faceless voices. Maybe the hatred and animosity that grew over the years, fertilized by petty squabbles and tilled with sharp words, would have fallen barren and overgrown with weeds. 

But, no. They met in a robe shop, and they hated. They burned with it, until they were gutted by the fire. They left behind ruins, vacant and vast and unfamiliar. And somehow in the ashes, as they scrabbled for the flickering embers of themselves, they found each other. Soiled and soot-coated hands brushing through the debris, grasping and warm and chosen. 

* * *

Draco walks up to 12 Grimmauld Place like he owns it. His steps are sure and confident, landing with a purpose that belies the way his hands sweat. The serpent knocker, twisted and hissing, is cold beneath his touch, and when he pulls away, his fingers leave ghostly shadows against the metal that fade as he waits. 

The door opens with a rasp like calloused skin against skin, and behind it, Harry Potter stands. His placid, polite expression changes, and wariness and desire shine from his eyes like gas lights flickering down a hall. He steps aside, opening the door, and Draco steps inside, the two of them mirroring each other’s motions in a dance only they know. 

Even in the gloom of Grimmauld Place, Harry shines. This house eats up light the way a jackal tears into carrion, but even it can't douse the flame of The Boy Who Lived. His dark skin, polished like mahogany. His green eyes, like bright bottles. His unkempt, black hair, lustrous and desperate to be tamed by someone else’s fingers. His shoulders are strong and wide, his waist trim and narrow. He is the fire in the center of the earth, solid and molten and uncertain, and it's all Draco can do to not dive into that depth, that heat, as soon as the door closes behind them. 

Their dance moves farther into the house, careful, practiced footfalls that draw them from the front room to the stairs. The steps sound beneath his feet, violins holding notes in perfect, discordant harmony as they ascend. He lets Harry lead, trails after him. Desperation and hunger grow as he moves. By the time they reach the doorway into Harry's room, Draco feels emaciated and starving for whatever scraps he's about to receive. 

Harry's hands on him burn. They light him up like tinder waiting for flame. He erupts with each gentle caress, with the feel of lips against skin, with hardness against hardness. Harry moans into his mouth, into the hollow of his throat, into the gentle slope of his hips, and it's a rush of oxygen, everything blazing with bright, unbearable light. 

Draco finally tangles his hands in Harry's hair. He coaxes and guides, murmurs gentle, soft words that he'll only half-remember later. Praise and curses, devotion and blasphemy. Harry kneels between Draco's legs like a penitent man, and he worships Draco's body with hands and mouth and eyes, pours a deluge of pleasure upon the rolling plains of his earth. Draco is full, and he is filled. He is falling. 

Harry's touch is like knives against Draco's skin, his soul, cutting him open until he's raw and bleeding. He writhes with pain, with pleasure, and wonders if he'll see the paths those rough, calloused fingers have carved into his body like furrows, like tilled earth, like rebirth and growth and warm, aching sun. Draco pulls Harry to his feet, stumbles them to the bed. They press against each other like the earth against the sky. Dark against pale, with only a horizon between. 

Panting mouths. Grasping hands. They leave bites and bruises across each other's skin like road markers. Signs of where they've been and where they'll go again. Harry guides Draco's touch over familiar paths until his body opens beneath questing fingers, welcoming and warm. It burns again, but the pleasure is pain is home, and Draco can't stop himself from crying out when he’s unable to settle any deeper, body on fire and shaking apart. 

They move. In and out, rolling like tides or a breeze across still waters. Bones and sinew, muscles pulling, flesh open and wet and wanting. Tectonic plates grinding together as the world resettles, Draco buried under Harry's weight. Fingers dig into Draco's arms, pinning them to the mattress, his stained skin covered by dark hands like bone under soil. Harry comes apart above Draco, and when his nails bite into the skin of Draco's body, they leave bloody marks behind. Half-moons of bright, singing pain that will fade and join the other pale marks left across his skin like valleys. 

Red streaked across the scars on his chest. Forehead pressed against the bolt on his skin. Teeth biting too hard. Nails digging too deep. If they had each made any number of innumerable decisions, maybe they wouldn't be here. Maybe they wouldn't be breaking and rebuilding each other with each breath exhaled across flushed skin, each bright flash of light behind closed eyes. Maybe the stinging ache in his arm would only be the burn of pleasure, instead of the echoed reminder of command. But as he crumbles, as the hollowness within him collapses beneath the weight of everything they are together, he's grateful for the shaking numbness that comes after. 

Draco breathes. He breathes and breathes, and he tries to stop the feeling of drowning, of falling. 

* * *

After, Harry studies the geography of Draco's body. He knows its mountains and valleys, has traveled the coastline of his waist, settled in the delta of his hips. His fingers trail over familiar roads, arriving at the stained, scarred skin of his left arm. 

"Let me see," he says into the quiet hush of the room, and Draco does. 

He turns his body to face Harry's, a delicate curve in the ruin of the blankets, his arm lying between them like a dying thing. 

The scar is thick and heavy, a tangled web of red and white lines. The small wounds where Harry's nails had bitten into Draco's skin are still red and weeping, and Harry wipes the blood away to reveal the dark, indistinct stain beneath. 

"It's coming back." Draco's voice breaks like ice on a lake, shattering the peace with an reverberation that Harry can feel in the center of his chest. 

He knows what the words mean, squeezes Draco's arm gently before reaching for his wand. 

Draco is silent and unmoving as Harry cuts it out. Blood pours over skin, red pooling in the white sheets. He murmurs praise and devotion as he transforms the landscape of Draco's body. He knows these places, too. The delicate tendons and tensing muscles, all hidden beneath discolored flesh. These imperfections, these gaping wounds. And as he whispers a healing spell, the words brushing against the ruin of Draco's arm, he tries to convince himself that they won't be here again in a few weeks, when the scar starts to fade and the Mark returns. That Harry won't be waiting for the confident knock on his door. That even this repeated bloodstained moment won't be loved and cherished and despised all at once. 

Clothes settle on skin like snow over mountains. They soften the sharpness of Draco's lines, the hardness of his body. They wrap him in a layer of ivory, cold and harsh and pristine. The surface of the earth crusted with white. 

Harry shivers. 

Later, Draco's form bright in the darkness as he leaves, Harry closes the door. He stands. His hand is on the knob, but he can't pull it away. There is an ache inside him. A wound that won't stop bleeding, that he can't see. It beats in time with someone else's heart. He feels misery. He feels alive. 

If he were asked, if there were a way for him to give it back, to make it stop… 

He wouldn't. 

These are the scars he chose. 

Chooses. 

Will choose again. 

**Author's Note:**

> I thought I was going to write something smutty and fun and lighthearted when I started looking at prompts for the HP Kinkfest 2020 list. And then this one caught me, put hooks into my soul, and wouldn't let go until I got this out on the page.
> 
> I also, for some reason, decided that I wanted to try and write it in the style of John Steinbeck, because that's exactly what a kinkfest needs. I don't know how close to the mark I got, and this is decidedly outside of my usual style, but I love it, wholly and unabashedly, scars and all.
> 
> Thank you SO MUCH to overzelos and clotpolesonly (who's not even in this fandom!) for their critical feedback and help polishing this, as well as for patting me on the head and telling me I'm pretty. I needed both equally with this one.
> 
> Also, big shout out to gracerene who's additional prompt for this ruined my life: These scars are his choice.


End file.
